
Class _ 

Book ._MA% 

Copyright N° 



CgfiBStt 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE 
HARPS OF GOD 



* 




: ^.;;*j., ■■,.,:.■:■ '" '■■■'■ 


':':" ' ■? -"" - 




111 f :/ "* 


!,„; Mum-]- f H 


II' 


: ;: llp 


■ . ■ . . 












■■ ■■■: ■■'■•■ , li'';ll 


jgSS 




1 


; ; v|«|-:' 


| 


^** s&&§ 


:: :|.US.. 


;; $;. ; 




lia. . 11: illlU .1.1 


^ jj 


^HiH^^Hrai 






^v* • 






\ 


| 


lBm <£ ' 

1 

IB 


If 




II *l 






r 


y f | 


II « i 


■ ; ®5t- 






r m 


: ;|HI ||P! 


1 ^3BB 




i- M * 








II '"IIIIII' .--- ■-' ■ '■ iP^ 


^:>^J 








** ^S&"' 




ItikMif • 




fe 





ST. CECILIA 

From Painting by Raphael, 1483-1520 



d *$ 



<0 



Copyright, 1914, by 
GEORGE MAC ADAAX 



DEC 22 1914 
CI.A388916 



/*& 







"",,. 



CONTENTS 

I. The Harp 

The Harp Among Instru- 
ments 9 

The Harp of God 15 

The Harp in Tune 27 

II. Harp-Chords 

The Matchless Melodies 45 

The Chord of Sympathy .... 59 

The Martial Chord 71 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Page 

St. Cecilia Frontispiece 

David Playing Before Saul 41 

The Consoling Christ 57 

Temptation 69 




I. ^fje i|arp 

It is related of Hermes, the high 
priest of Osiris— B. C. 1800— that 
striking a tortoise shell which he 
had found on the banks of the Nile, 
he observed that it gave forth a 
pleasing sound. 



A happy thought came to him, 
and he at once fashioned from it 
the first lyre, the father of the harp. 



THE HARP AMONG 
INSTRUMENTS 



THE HARP AMONG INSTRUMENTS 

The glamour with which poetry and legend 
have invested the harp may have something to 
do with the tender place it occupies in our 
thought to-day. Many of us when in remi- 
niscent mood can hear a mother sing the old- 
time song, the refrain of which ran, 

"Bring my harp to me again; 
Let me sing a gentle strain: 
Let me hear its tones once more, 
Ere I pass to yon bright shore." 

However it may be accounted for, its music 
touches a deeper and more sympathetic chord 
than that of any other instrument. It has the 
voice of poesy, of sentiment, and speaks the 
sweetest, tenderest emotions of the soul. 

Thomas Moore has an exquisite picture of its 
origin. He sings the woes of a beautiful sea- 
nymph who loved in vain a mortal youth. On 
the shore she oft wandered in hope of seeing 
him again, her heart breaking with grief, 

Till heaven looked with pity on true love so warm, 
And changed to this soft harp the sea-maiden's form: 
And her hair shedding teardrops from all its bright rings, 
Fell o'er her white arm to make the gold strings. 

11 



12 



THE HARPS OF GOD 



In another poem he tells us how love came to 
be the harp's sweet story. In a bower where 
oft came a couple "With love's first wonderful 
rapture blest" hung a harp. As he told the 
story of the passion which had possessed his 
soul and she looked back at him with the pure, 
tender response of the heavenly fire in her 
eyes, the harp listened and picked up all the 
sighs and eloquent pauses, learned all 
the tender tones and senti- 
ments, so that now whenever 
its strings are caressed, 

It sings again Love's old 
refrain, 

Which has in it all of 
heaven and joy, 

Tendered by an under- 
tone of sorrow and 
pain. 

The harp had become 
an old instrument even 
in the days of Moore. It 
seemed to pass with the 
age of minstrelsy and we 
hear the old poet sighing: 

Sing, sad harp, thus sing to me; 

Alike our doom is cast: 
Both lost to all but memory, 

We live but in the past. 




THE HARP AMONG INSTRUMENTS 13 

But there is a revival of interest in its beauty 
and power. Defects once regarded as funda- 
mental have been overcome and the harp is 
assured a position more kingly than it occu- 
pied in the days of romance. It is once more 
a classic among musical instruments. Even 
to-day the great scores of Meyerbeer, Gounod, 
Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner are not complete 
without it. 



THE 
HARP OF GOD 



THE HARP OF GOD 

This life of ours is like a wild aeolian harp 
Of many a joyous strain. — Longfellow. 

Among all the marvelous scenes unfolded to 
the Seer of Patmos perhaps none makes such 
demand upon our imagination as that in which 
he saw "a sea of glass mingled with fire" and 
standing by it the victorious saints, "having in 
their hands the harps of God." 

And they sang. You may have heard a 
thousand trained singers with splendid orches- 
tral accompaniment render some of our great 
oratorios. Garibaldi's Hymn was sung by a 
choir and orchestra of five thousand, with an 
audience of twenty thousand people joining in 
the choruses and the great hero himself stand- 
ing on a platform between the two — certainly 
an inspiring event. But what earthly experi- 
ence can suggest to our imagination all that 
John heard and saw? For there were gathered 
the strong and mighty of earth, the overcomers 
of God, singing their anthem of eternal triumph 
— "the song of Moses and the Lamb." 

With their hands touching the quivering 
strings of the harps of God, and their voices 

17 



18 THE HARPS OF GOD 

lifted in paeans of victory, the sound must have 
been as of many waters and great thunders, 
whose music made vibrant every star and 
attuned into perfect harmony every rushing 
sound of the universe. 

It is a well-known fact that fine particles 
of matter, under the influence of rhythmical 
sounds, will, in obedience to some mysterious 
law, arrange themselves into symmetrical forms. 
And perhaps Frances Osgood was as scientific 
as poetical when, conceiving that music was a 
great agency at creation in the arrangement of 
chaos into order, she heard in her soul some 
such choir: 

The Father spake and in grand reverberations 

Through space rolled on the mighty music-tide, 
While to its low, majestic modulations, 

The clouds of chaos slowly swept aside. 
And wheresoe'er in his rich creation, 

Sweet music breathes in wave or bird or soul, 
'Tis but the faint and far reverberation, 

Of that great tune to which the planets roll. 

What the harps of God may have been we 
cannot tell. The Great Artist, if he wished, 
could mold their exquisite shape out of pure, 
crystal light. He could give resonance with 
some of the wood of the Tree of Life, could 
string it with golden sunbeams and touch it 
with zephyrs until, like the fabled harp of 
Apollo, it would melt the very rocks and set 



THE HARP OF GOD 19 

the stones to singing. But the figure, surely, is 
designed to arouse in us anticipations of the 
delights and pleasures in which harmony pe- 
culiarly ministers here and hereafter. 

However, the true harp of God; that which 
under his hand produces the subtlest and 
sweetest music, is the Harp of a Human Life. 

This application of the figure is not new. 
When David formed his orchestras for worship 
he placed among the harps and psalteries and 
"instruments of ten strings" the human heart. 
When Paul speaks of Christians as "those who 
make sweet melody in their hearts to God" the 
expression he uses presents in the original the 
thought of striking the strings of an instrument 
— "those who strike melody from their hearts 
to God." 

It is a familiar figure in literature. Long- 
fellow has the thought of David: 

This life of ours is like a wild seolian harp 
Of many a joyous strain. 

Shakespeare has the same conception. Hamlet 
hands Guildenstern a musical instrument and 
asks him to play upon it. But he protests that 
he cannot, and Hamlet responds: 

"Yet you would play upon me; you would sound me, from 
my lowest note to the top of my compass. Call me what in- 
strument you will, you cannot play upon me." 



20 THE HARPS OF GOD 

Charles Kingsley varies the figure in no essen- 
tial sense when he writes: 

Our souls are organ pipes of diverse stop 
And various pitch: each with proper notes 
Thrilling beneath the selfsame breath of God, 
Though poor alone, yet joined, they're harmony. 

The conception is true to our profoundest 
thought. There is in our inmost heart a feeling 
that we are a part of an infinite order, the de- 
sign of which is harmony. The words of Madi- 
son Cawein ring true to our inner vision: 

All things are wrought of melody, 
Unheard yet full of speaking spells: 

Within the rock, within the tree, 
A soul of music dwells. 

A mute symphonic sense that thrills 

The silent frame of mortal things; 
Its heart in the ancient hills 

And in each flower sings. 

To harmony all growth is set: 

Each seed is but a music note, 
From which each plant, each violet, 

Evolves its purple note. 

Compact of melody, the rose 

Wooes the soft wind with strain on strain 

Of crimson; and the lily blows 
Its white bars to the rain. 

The trees are paeans; and the grass 

One long green fugue, beneath the sun; 

Song is their life and all shall pass, 
Shall cease when song is done." 



THE HARP OF GOD 21 

Under the spell of a summer's day it doesn't 
take a poet to feel the rhythm, and hear the 
songs which nature sings, nor to see among the 
leaves of the trees, 

Strange minstrels on their airy harps 
Among the trembling branches playing. 

In our highest reaches of thought we realize 
that the end of existence and the ultimate law 
of life is harmony. We are assured that there 
is a "music of the spheres" to which we are 
subtly responsive; that we are a part of the 
chorus with the morning stars when they sing 
together; that we shall never find rest nor 
peace till we tune our lives to the concord that 
is in All-Good. Lanier has told us that "Love 
is music in search of a word," and we know that 
beauty is only harmony. Every grace of a 
virtuous life is a symphony in the concert of 
humanity. Every virtue of a strong character 
is a majestic fugue; every deed a part of a 
sonata. A Christly life is a hymn of praise, 
and even the impulses of love and fellowship 
are antiphonal. 

Perhaps we are made to feel the truth under- 
lying this conception more clearly from life's 
discords than its harmonies. We are intuitively 
conscious of lives about us which are altogether 
absonant. They are a discordant note in the 



22 THE HARPS OF GOD 

home, a disharmony in society, a jangle every- 
where. Our own souls are often vexed with 
disharmony within. Conscience and passion, 
will and desire, hope and fear, faith and doubt, 
duty and self are as discordant as the strings of 
an untuned harp. And pushing along this 
thought we come to an essential truth of life, 
namely, that sin is discord. It is as if some 
master demon who knew nothing of the in- 
strument upon which he plays strikes all the 
strings of the human heart a-jangle. 

Henceforth there is no harmony anywhere, 
for, 

If sin be in the heart, 

The fairest sky is foul, and sad the summer weather. 
The eye no longer sees the lambs at play together, 
The dull ear cannot hear the birds that sing so sweetly, 
And all the joy of God's good earth has gone completely, 

If sin be in the heart. 

For when sin comes in it is as if a great, 
harsh hand had smitten into a discord the 
strings we were so delicately tuning. The rela- 
tions of life are interrupted and broken, the 
correspondences with peace and calm are shat- 
tered, the concord in the life and between life 
and its environment is gone. We have lost 
both the peace of God and peace with God. 

Music, more than any other force which 
plays upon the human heart, brings us face to 



THE HARP OF GOD 23 

face with the Infinite. She, more than any 
other art, lifts the curtains of the spiritual 
world, making us feel and discern, though 
dimly, the great continent of psychic truth, 
the outlines of which are admitted now by 
scientific thought, lying ahead of us. More 
clearly than we can explain we feel it, that the 
soul within us seeks ever to get its note from 
the Eternal and to chorus our finite life with 
the Infinite. 

For this is peace — to lose the lonely note 
Of self in love's celestial ordered strain: 
And this is joy — to find oneself again 

In Him whose harmonies forever float 

Through all the spheres of song, below, above — 

For God is music, even as God is love. 

The soul senses the presence of a Master 
Musician who has created it subject to the law 
of a harmony that is in all things else. One 
can never totally deny the existence of a spirit- 
ual world so long as music ministers to him in a 
trembling reed or pulsing string. "Music is the 
process of disentangling spirit from matter," 
some one has said. If this be true, then the 
agent in the process of disentanglement is 
the soul. It is the soul which finds in musical 
sounds a mysterious language — one might al- 
most say of a world known long ago — which it 
innately understands and in response to which 






24 THE HARPS OF GOD 

it has a whole vocabulary of emotions that no 
other speech of earth may arouse. 

It is the soul that in the G string of a violin 
hears a call to which it opens all its flood gates 
of ecstasy; which, with a minor chord, goes down 
into a valley of sorrow "as though it were losing 
paradise over again/' and which, behind the 
thundering organ and the swelling of a great 
oratorio, swings upward till the enrapturing har- 
monies blend with the chorus from the opening 
gates of the Celestial City. Music is the Muse 
who brings us to the threshold of a mysterious 
world, the exploration of which lies a tempting 
adventure adown man's future. There, with 
the unfolding of his soul-faculties he will be 
led into the complete attainment of the harmony 
of which he himself is capable and this individ- 
ual culture will inevitably break into a social 
order which may be looked for as The Kingdom 
of Concord or The Kingdom of God and of 
which music is a sweet prophetess. 

Music, thou mystery of sound, 

Thou child of wonder birth, 
Where words leave off — there first unwound 

Thy melodies to earth. 
No one thy message understands; 

We feel, but can't express; 
Thy diamond links escape our hands, 

But not our consciousness! 



THE HARP OF GOD 25 

Uplifted on the wings of song 

The soul of man may rise, 
Pierce through the night of sin and wrong, 

Claim kindred with the skies! 
Earth's sweetest lays climb on the ways 

That reach up from the sod, 
With footsteps fleet to kiss the feet 

Of music's master, — God. 



THE 
HARP IN TUNE 



THE HARP IN TUNE 

Strange that a Harp of a thousand strings 
Should keep in tune so long! — Watts. 

It may be clearly accepted that God is the 
Master of this life-harp. To Job it was a 
strange thing that men did not recognize this: 
"But none sayeth, Where is God my Maker, 
who giveth songs in the night?" But David 
cried: "Thv hands have made me and fash- 
ioned me. O Lord, thou art our Father: and 
we are all the work of thy hand. I will praise 
thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." 

There is a legend that upon the walls of an 
ancient castle there hung for many years an 
old harp. It was dusty with time and broken. 
Many a hand had taken it down, adjusted the 
strings, and essayed to play upon it, but the 
old instrument responded only with plaintive 
and discordant wailing. One day a strolling 
minstrel came to the castle. His eye fell upon 
the harp and rested there an instant while 
winder and hope grew in his face. And when a 
cry of astonishment escaped him the harp re- 
sponded with a sound that set all its strings 

a-quiver with rare tone. The minstrel took it 

29 



30 THE HARPS OF GOD 

down, caressed it tenderly, and then tuning it 
placed loving fingers upon the strings. The 
old harp seemed to abandon itself to him, and 
the pent-up richness of the years came forth 
under his hand, for its master had come. The 
illustration serves to direct us to a great 
truth. The human soul has its Master, and, 
like the harp, is broken, out of tune, and in- 
tractable until it falls into the hands of God. 
Conversion is only a new hand — God's hand — 
touching the strings. There are many people 
whose lives are discordant and unsatisfactory 
with no apparent reason for it. They have 
money, they achieve fame, they find pleasure, 
and the world yields to them, but ever leaving 
them dissatisfied and disappointed. Yet when 
the Great Harpist finds them and they sur- 
render to him, these blessings blend under his 
Hand into a delightful harmony. The soul 
having made its adjustment, all other gifts and 
possessions are brought into that subjectivity 
wherein is developed their highest felicity and 
greatest value. For over eight centuries the 
life-harp of Francis of Assisi has enriched 
human living. Tone quality has been given to 
thousands of lives by Madame de Guyon, 
Thomas h Kempis, Francis de Sales, and 
others, from whose hearts God has caressed 
wonderful music. 



THE HARP IN TUNE 31 

The secret of a strong, beautiful life is in its 
accord with the eternal harmonies. "Where 
did you get that new piece, Mary?" asked a 
mother of her daughter at the piano. "It isn't 
a new- piece, mother. The piano has been 
tuned." Just so. Many a life, with a wealth 
of tone for which the world goes hungry, with a 
beautiful score before it, plays a jangle because 
it has not fallen into the hands of the Master. 
A soul out of God has imperfect adjustment. 
To such, trouble is a discord; old age is a dis- 
sonance; death is a breaking of the instrument. 
The minor chords have no place in their reper- 
toire. When David learned the blessed uses of 
affliction he cried, "He has placed a new song 
in my mouth." What a difference there was 
in Paul's life after it become adjusted! Tenny- 
son might have had him in mind when he 
wrote : 

Love took up the Harp of Life, and smote on all the chords 

with might; 
Smote the chord of self, that, trembling passed in music out 

of sight. 

The hand of the Master had tuned the 
heart and swept the strings producing that 
lovesong which begins, "If I speak with the 
tongues of men and angels and have not love, 
I am become as sounding brass and tinkling 
cymbal." 



32 THE HARPS OF GOD 

"Change the tune!" shouted Napoleon to his 
bandmaster, as he saw his army weary and 
lagging, with the summit of the Alps yet far 
above them. Change the tune of your life. 
Ahead lie the steep paths, the rocky passes. 
You cannot make the summit at the present 
rate. Your heart is lagging because it has not 
found the music of life. Get the rhythm from 
heaven. Take your tempo from the invisible. 
Let the song which aligns the angelic hosts get 
into your heart. 

Let God chorus your life. 

The soul of a man 

Is a harp of a thousand strings, 

and each virtue must sound its own note in the 
ensemble. Peter had this thought in mind 
when he wrote to his friends, "Chorus vour 
faith." That is, make your life a chorus in 
which your faith leads, but with which all the 
graces and beauties of Christian character har- 
monize. Plato refers to a man whose faith and 
conduct agree when he wrote: "And such a one 
I deem to be the true musician attuned to a 
fairer harmony than that of a lyre or any 
pleasant instrument of music." Faith alone 
sings a poor part. She is best heard and under- 
stood when she is expressed by a mighty chorus 
in which virtue, knowledge, self-control, pa- 



THE HARP IN TUNE 33 

tience, godliness, brotherly kindness and love 
blend their subtle and beautiful melodies into 
a burst of harmony which the hurrying world 
will linger to hear. But let your faith ring true 
to God's note. Let it be full and rich with the 
tones of the spiritual life. Some time ago a 
group of scientists spent some days by the 
chasm at Niagara in the endeavor to catch the 
dominant note of that chorus of waters. Do 
you listen for the God-note! Get your soul en 
rapport with the spiritual world. Let the 
echoes from the "sea of glass" flood all the 
avenues of your life with the bewitching con- 
cords of virtue. 

It is possible that to produce this result God 
may have to make you over. I have heard the 
story of a distinguished violinist who ordered a 
manufacturer to construct for him the best 
violin his skill could produce. It failed to 
please him, and in his disappointment and im- 
patience he broke it into many pieces and 
strode from the place. But the maker gathered 
the parts together and reconstructed it. Then 
he sent for the artist, who no sooner drew his 
bow across the strings than he recognized the 
tones he had heard in his soul and which he 
desired in a violin. A great musician said of 
one of his promising but emotionless pupils: 
"She sings well, but she lacks something. If I 



34 THE HARPS OF GOD 

were single, I would court her; I would marry 
her and I would break her heart. In six months 
she would be the greatest singer in Europe." 
It was the song from a heart crushed by sin and 
broken in its pride that David dared offer in the 
presence of God. 

The broken and contrite heart, O God, 
Thou wilt not despise. 

In fact, it is God's chance to make a musical 
instrument out of the human heart. Only 
when it is broken from its past can he reas- 
semble the shattered pieces around his thought 
of essential harmony. How melting the tones, 
how sympathetic the chords that come from 
the heart out of which the pride of this-world- 
liness has been broken! The notes of truth 
which ring from the Master's teaching are 
clear as a bell, but is not the sweetness of them 
due to the "broken body," the stricken and 
smitten life? 

If the Great Musician may have his way 
with us, he can take the most commonplace life 
and produce a refrain of wonderful inspiration 
to those who hear it. What were the days of 
chivalry without the minstrel and his harp? 
The story of heroism, the tale of valorous deed 
went from the quivering strings straight to the 
heart of the hearer. It is the music to which 
your life is written which sends it into and 



THE HARP IN TUNE 35 

makes it a part of other lives. A young man 
spoke of his work as the " daily grind." He 
could not better express the depressing mo- 
notony of many lives. You can hear the grit 
meeting the steel. You can see the will hold- 
ing the life upon the wheel that cuts into nerve 
and heart. But there is a Living Presence who 
can change, arrange, and scale all the sounds 
of even the daily grind until they are har- 
monious, and the life may sing: 

"Through all the tumult and the strife, 
I hear the music ringing: 
It finds an echo in my soul; 

How can I keep from singing?" 

It is related of one of the early martyrs, who 
before his execution was publicly exhibited in 
an iron cage, that his cheerful countenance led 
one to ask him the secret. "O," he said, "you 
can see these bars, but you cannot hear the 
music." What were the notes on those bars? 
He can tell whose faith transposes the earthly 
din into the heavenly song. Beneath the noted 
chimes of Saint Nicholas in Amsterdam, away 
up in the tower, sits a man, his hands encased 
in wooden gloves. He strikes the keys and the 
great bells above him respond. To him there 
might be no music in this — just the sound of 
wood upon wood, the creaking of the mecha- 
nism and the deafening clang utterly devoid of 



36 THE HARPS OF GOD 

beauty; but away on the highways the traveler 
hears and is charmed. The peasant lifts his 
face from the soil and worships. The city man 
stops in his mad rush, while for a moment the 
music steals into his soul. So there are some 
people who will stop to hear the refrain from 
your life. There are hearts hungering for the 
note which only you may sound. There are 
faces to be lifted and suffused with hope by the 
melody fretted from your stricken heart. There 
are souls over which the memory of your song 
shall etch a trail of beauty and inspiration 
forever. 

The Quaker poet heard a woman sing. His 
songless creed made protest against the sweet, 
pervasive power of her song. He said, as 
if in apology, while he acknowledged its in- 
fluence : 

"What could I other than I did? 
Could I a singing-bird forbid? 
Deny the wind-stirred leaf? Rebuke 
The music of the forest brook? 

She went with morning from my door, 
But left me richer than before: 
All felt behind the singer stood 
A sweet and gracious womanhood. 

O white soul! from that far-off shore 
Float some sweet song the waters o'er, 
Our faith confirm, our fears dispel, 
With the old voice we loved so well!" 



THE HARP IN TUNE 37 

Let the Master have his instrument. Let 
him tune and adjust it. Let him play upon it 
all the days of your earthly life, until its tones 
shall be rich and strong enough to make music 
as the Harp of God on the shore of the sea of 
glass. For the music that is in us passes not 
with the passing of these bodies. Omar 
Khayyam sang, as he thought, the lapsing of 
the noble temple-harp of the ancient Egyptians : 

Methinks 
'Twere time to break and cast it in the fire, 
The vain old harp, that, breathing from its strings, 
No music more to charm the ears of man, 
May, from its scented ashes, as it burns, 
Breathe resignation to the harper's soul. 

But its sweet music found grander form at the 
hands of later Phoenicians and Milesians, whose 
harp transcended even our modern creation. So 
the music of the human soul is imperishable. 
Somewhere, sometime, somehow it shall be 
given a form divinely responsive to the touch 
of the Master Musician. 

O Lord and Master of us all! 

Whate'er our name or sign, 
We own thy sway, we hear thy call. 

We test our lives by thine. 

We faintly hear, we dimly see, 

In differing phrase we pray; 
But, dim or clear, we own in thee 

The Light, the Truth, the Way! 



38 



THE HARPS OF GOD 



Thy litanies, sweet offices 

Of love and gratitude; 
Thy sacramental liturgies 

The joy of doing good. 

In vain shall waves of incense drift 

The vaulted nave around, 
In vain the minster turret lift 

Its brazen weights of sound. 

The heart must ring thy Christmas bells, 

Thy inward altars raise; 
Its faith and hope thy canticles, 

And its obedience praise! 



DAVID PLAYING BEFORE SAUL 

From Painting 
by Schopin 




II. 3|arp=Ci)orte 

Angel voices sung the mercy of their 

God, 
And strung their harps. 

— Moore. 



Time has laid his hand 

Upon my heart, gently, not smiting 
it, 

But as a harper lays his open palm 

Upon his harp to deaden its vibra- 
tions. 

— Longfellow. 

He who would be the tongue of this 

wide land 
Must string his harp with chords of 

sturdy iron. 
And strike it with a toil-imbrowned 

hand. 

— Lowell. 



THE MATCH- 
LESS MELODIES 



THE MATCHLESS MELODIES 

He touched his harp, and nations heard entranced. 
As some vast river of unfailing source, 
Rapid, exhaustless, deep, his numbers flowed, 
And opened new fountains in the human heart. 

— Pollock. 

From the life-harp God has produced some 
matchless melodies. Some great soul, like 
Luther, sounds his one vibrant note through a 
generation — just one note — which rises above 
every other sound of our human world and by 
its very dominance compels all other tones to 
gather themselves into accord. 

What exquisite strains from this life-harp 
come! Sometimes God will take a fragile, 
broken life, as Apollo took up the rifted lute, 
and find in it subduing tones which melt the 
rocks and set the stones to singing. 

What undertones of pain throb from this 
life-harp! The Great Musician presses the 
heart-strings upon the frets of life and refrains 
in exquisite minor key force their way into the 
world. We call them our "Songs in the Night." 
Such they are, as Newman sang on the be- 
calmed orange boat — 

47 



48 THE HARPS OF GOD 

Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, 

Lead thou me on. 
The night is dark and I am far from home, 

Lead thou me on. 

Such as Wesley sang in his dark hour — 

Jesus, Lover of my soul, 
Let me to thy bosom fly. 

Such songs as speak the universal language of 
sorrow and illustrate the truth so beautifully 
spoken by Gerald Massey — 

The heart is like an instrument whose strings 

Steal nobler music from life's many frets: 

The golden threads are spun through suff'ring's fire 

And all the rarest hues of human life 

Take radiance and are rainbowed out in tears. 

Many of earth's sorrow-swept hearts seem 
most like those old castles in the forests, storm- 
beaten, yet filling their own loveliness and 
the dim shadows of the encompassing wood 
with exquisite melodies from zEolian harps 
stretched from the broken turrets. George 
Matheson beautifully brings this out in his 
reference to the "School of Sorrow": "And so, 
my soul, thou art receiving a music-lesson from 
thy Father. Thou art being educated for the 
choir invisible. There are chords too minor 
for the angels. There may be heights in the 
symphony which are beyond thy scale — heights 
which the angels alone can reach. But there 



THE MATCHLESS MELODIES 49 

are depths which belong to thee, and can only 
be touched by thee. Thy Father is training 
thee for the part the angels cannot sing; and 
the school is sorrow. In the night he is pre- 
paring thy song. In the valley he is tuning thy 
voice. In the cloud he is deepening thy chords. 
In the storm he is enriching thy pathos. In the 
rain he is sweetening thy melody. In the cold 
he is molding thine expression. In the transi- 
tion from hope to fear he is perfecting thy 
lights and shades. Despise not thy school of 
sorrow, O my soul! It will give thee a unique 
part in the universal song." 

There are harmonies brought out by pros- 
perity. This life-harp is sometimes an seolian 
upon which the zephyrs produce tones which 
are lost when the gales touch the strings. 
As the rays of the rising sun fell upon the 
statue of Memnon it responded with strains of 
music. We have all listened and looked up in 
gladness as some soul has cried his joy when 
the sun smiled upon him, 

And echoes did feed on the sweetness, 
Repeating it long. 

It is as true that there are some harmonies 
which only storms can develop. A story runs 
that in the Black Forest of Germany an old- 
time baron built a castle with two loftv towers 



50 THE HARPS OF GOD 

spanning a deep gorge. He stretched great 
wires from one to the other. The zephyrs 
could do nothing with such an instrument. But 
when the gales came sweeping down the defiles 
of the mountains and the storms played upon 
the strings his mighty hurricane-harp thrilled 
the whole pile with its harmony. So at the 
gate of his Gethsemane the Master "sang a 
hymn." The storm which bore down upon 
him made his life a mighty harp singing to 
every tempest-tossed life. Thus from his cell 
Milton rimed and from his prison Bunyan 
sang. Even so the whispering breezes play 
upon us and the thundering gales smite us, 
developing the resonance and tonality which 
have their place in the overture of humanity. 

But of all the forces which are able to entice 
music from this life-harp there is none like the 
Spirit of God, because only he touches the 
higher ranges of tone quality. It is interesting 
to note how surely Paul states cause and effect 
when he says, "Be filled with the Spirit," "sing- 
ing and making melody in your heart to the 
Lord." It has been Spirit-filled lives from which, 
at the critical times in human history, God has 
produced the "glorious spiritual note," which, 
becoming dominant, has lifted the failing chorus 
of humanity. At times when society seemed to 
be falling to pieces, when folly and sin were 



THE MATCHLESS MELODIES 51 

drowning by their discord the marching tunes 
to which the race moves onward, the needed 
tone has suddenly risen above the din, as the 
song of Orpheus rose over that of the sirens. 
Some voice pulsating with spiritual power has 
lifted the keynote. Hearts have caught it, 
voices have sung it, and the halting, straggling 
line straightens out and the human mob be- 
comes an army swinging on its triumphant way 
to the rhythm of the song. 

Many times society has been saved by this 
note stricken from a human heart. Historv 
with its Savonarolas, Luthers, Andreas Hoefers, 
Lincolns, justifies the word of Lowell, 

He who would be the tongue of this wide land, 
Must string his harp with cords of sturdy iron. 

From such as these the race has caught a new 
marching tune. And so shall it be with the 
times upon which we have fallen. Do not fear. 
God will find the singing-tone in some Spirit- 
filled life which shall give us our keynote for 

another dav's march. 

*/ 

But this is essentially true too of the smaller 
groups of society. "Be filled with the Spirit," 
and you shall be the singing-tone in your own 
home. There was once in a certain family one 
whom they named "The Princess" because she 
seemed to belong to a world apart and to get 



52 THE HARPS OF GOD 

her alignments from the spiritual realm. But 
her life sang the note which lifted and re- 
arranged upon the higher plane of human 
harmony all the lives of that circle. The world 
owed a group of strong men and beautiful, pa- 
tient women to the song the Spirit elicited 
from the life of that sister. "Be filled with the 
Spirit/' and you shall be the singing-tone 
among your friends and comrades. The finest 
epitaph ever written was ordered carved by a 
group of friends upon the monument of one of 
their number: "It was easier to be good when 
she was with us." 

A great musical critic once wrote that the 
message of Mozart's music ran: "Blessed are 
the pure in heart"; that of Beethoven, "Blessed 
are they that are persecuted for righteousness' 
sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." 
Some one adds: "Chopin seems to say, 'Blessed 
are they that mourn, for they shall be com- 
forted.' What is the message from your life- 
music? You may have yours as verily as did 
these artists. Heart melody is a kind of music 
which does not depend upon the artistic gift or 
upon the musical culture possessed at the most 
by few. Everyone who will can make it. And 
because it is spiritual it is that which nothing 
external can effect or remove, neither can it be 
overcome by the noises of the world or the 



THE MATCHLESS MELODIES 53 

cries of the market place. There are some 
people who are waiting for your heart-song. 

Sing! Whether you are able to lift a musical 
note or not, sing! Be a sweetly pervasive, 
spiritual keynote in your circle of companion- 
ships. If there's a song in your soul, your 
world will catch it and chorus with you. 



THE CONSOLING CHRIST 

From Painting 
by Plockhorst, 1825 



THE CHORD 
OF SYMPATHY 



THE CHORD OF SYMPATHY 

I have compassion on the multitude because they con- 
tinue with me now three days and have nothing to eat; and I 
will not send them away fasting, lest they faint by the way. 
— Jesus. 

The man who melts with social sympathy, though not 
allied, is than a thousand kinsmen of more worth. — Euripides. 

My heart, which by a secret harmony still moves with 
thine, joined in connection sweet. — Milton. 

One strong, full chord which the Spirit-filled 
life will sound is the Chord of Sympathy. It has 
three melodies, Appreciation, Pity, and Love, 
which, blended, express the rich harmony so 
dominating in the life of Jesus. This even 
more than his claims to Messiahship or the 
recital of our Christian creeds rivets the affec- 
tion of the world to him. 

Sympathy may be subtly expressed. Said a 

young friend, regretfully, "I never know what 

to say to people who are in sorrow, and the 

more I feel for them the less I can say." But, 

after all, the saying it matters little, though the 

felicitous expression of comfort is a beautiful 

gift. What does matter and what does help is 

61 



62 THE HARPS OF GOD 

the fellowship which finds words unnecessary or 
at least inadequate. 

More than men need alms, they need the 
human touch. Gold may do much to alle- 
viate suffering: it can do little for sorrow. A 
kindly deed, a friendly word will make of a dry 
crust a feast for a hungry heart. These are 
days when we glibly speak of the brotherhood 
of man, of mercy and help, of sweet charity, 
and while we speak we wonder what sum will 
correctly and fully express our pity. Some one 
has said, "It is very hard to know how to help 
people when you can't send them blankets or 
coal or Christmas dinners." But these things 
are the smallest of human needs. Jesus gave 
no gold; instead he dispensed the alms of a 
sympathetic and loving heart. "Silver and gold 
have I none" was said to the cripple at the 
Gate Beautiful, "but such as I have give I 
unto thee." And they took him by the hand. 
What they gave was better than a mint of gold. 
We are all cripples, in some sense, at some Gate 
Beautiful, and the one gift which gives us 
strength to rise is that of human sympathy. It 
is said a beggar asked for alms of a man on the 
street. The man felt for money, and finding 
none, replied, "Brother, I have nothing to give 
you, I am sorry." "But you said 'Brother/ 
answered the beggar, and that is an alms." 



THE CHORD OF SYMPATHY 63 

When we offer a service or gifts without this 
we debauch our benefice and rob our own 
hearts. 

As Sir Launfal rode forth all radiant with 
the passion to win the Holy Grail, a leper 
crouching by the way, 

Seemed the one blot on the summer morn, 
So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn. 

But the leper spurned the gift and cried, 

"He gives only worthless gold 
Who gives from a sense of duty: 
But he who gives but a slender mite 
And gives to that which is out of sight, 
The hand cannot grasp the whole of his alms, 
The heart outstretches its eager palms, 
For a god goes with it and makes it a store 
To the soul that was starving in darkness before." 

We encounter some people who tell us that 
sympathy is a waste. That to bear the burdens 
and assume the cares of others is to scatter 
one's heart energies for naught. So, long ago, 
they decried the breaking of the alabaster box 
of ointment as a waste of treasure. It "might 
have been sold for three hundred pence." That 
same economic spirit may actuate one to with- 
hold his sympathies and to live apart from his 
brother's joys and tragedies. But we cannot 
so violate a primal law of our being with im- 
punity. It will react upon our heart and dry 



64 THE HARPS OF GOD 

up the very fountains to which we must go 
for our own refreshment and peace. It is poor 
economy, for "it tendeth to poverty" of soul. 

Sympathy is the universal bond. The very 
word is musical and means an accordness with 
other people. It involves that power to repro- 
duce the feelings of others in our own souls 
that resides in the string and makes it respond 
when its own peculiar note is struck, and by 
which you may tune two instruments into har- 
mony. It is the ability to forget self and 
surrender your own note in the endeavor to 
harmonize with another. "I can't sing with 
her. She flats her E's, and I find that my 
voice shades off in sympathy with hers. It's 
getting me into a bad habit." So said one 
member of a quartet, speaking of the soprano. 
But in the making of life's music the absolutely 
perfect note is no more required than is the 
instinct for harmony. We can't any of us sing 
only solo parts. We must join the ensemble. 
"The hand cannot say to the foot, I have no 
need of thee." It must recognize the unity of 
the body. Even in matter there are what we 
know in physics as sympathetic sounds, sl re- 
sponse which solid bodies make to each other. 
So there is in humanity an accordness which 
the attuned ear recognizes as running through 
all the intricate human relationship. "Of a 



THE CHORD OF SYMPATHY 65 

truth, men are mystically united; a mystic 
bond of brotherhood makes all men one;" so 
said Carlyle. This is the basic tie transcending 
that of country, speech, color, or blood in its 
appeal to all men, for it belongs to humanity. 
It speaks our common origin, our common toil 
and struggle. It is one man's demand upon 
another, whoever and wherever he be. James 
Whitcomb Riley has put this into touching 
expression in a poem, one stanza of which 
runs: 

As the little white hearse went glimmering by — 

A stranger petted a ragged child 
In the crowded walks, and she knew not why, 

But he gave her a coin for the way she smiled. 
And the bootblack thrilled with pleasure strange, 

As a customer put back his change 
With a kindly hand and a grateful sigh, 
As the little white hearse went glimmering by. 

Sympathy underlies all the artificial distinc- 
tions of life and is the one unifying chord to 
which all hearts are tuned. The Harp of God 
must be rich with this sweet, satisfying tone. 



TEMPTATION 

From Painting 
by Hofmann 



THE 
MARTIAL CHORD 



THE MARTIAL CHORD 

Let your life-harp sound the note of courage. 
Dr. Watson's Christmas message to the world, 
"Be pitiful; every man is fighting a hard bat- 
tle," is more generally needed than we realize, 
because it is so universally true. We are apt to 
think that ours is the only severe fight going on 
at the time, whereas every one who has not 
fully surrendered to the enemies of his life is 
having a fight on his hands every step of the 
way. 

"What's the use?" is a current phrase, which 
expresses a soul-surrender. All about us men 
and women are taking their own lives because 
they have given up the struggle. Constantly 
they are pulling down the standards which once 
stood for ideals "because they have lost hope in 
them. The white flag of capitulation flutters 
everywhere because hearts have lost courage. 
"There goes another disillusioned man," said a 
cynic, pointing to one whose face sounded re- 
treat. "No," said his companion, "he is only 
discouraged." Men lie and steal because they 
are afraid. The dreadful story the papers tell 

every day of crime, deception, intrigue, and 

73 



74 THE HARPS OF GOD 

underground methods in the business world 
simply records the fact that a great lot of 
people are on the run. But these people are 
not the hopeless cravens you might think them. 
It is only needed that some one shall sound the 
martial note to recall them to the battle. 

The splendid offices of music in arousing a 
courageous spirit are so well recognized as to 
afford us a forceful analogy. A charge of the 
Scots Greys can be arranged almost any time 
if you will play the bagpipes. Lord Wellesley 
declared that troops which march to music will 
travel farther and come into camp in much 
better shape than any others. It is not for art 
that the German army has a musical force of 
over ten thousand men, but for the most prac- 
tical military purpose. Plutarch, describing the 
irresistible charge of the Spartans, said, "They 
advance, keeping pace to the time of their 
flutes, the music leading them into danger 
cheerful and unconcerned." I have read that 
after Lee's surrender, in 1865, a quartet of one 
of the Union regiments sang some of their 
army songs for a group of paroled Confederate 
officers. Among these were "The Battle Hymn 
of the Republic," "We're Coming, Father 
Abra'm," "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys 
Are Marching," and "The Star-Spangled Ban- 
ner." Thev closed their entertainment with 



THE MARTIAL CHORD 75 

"Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys," and one of the 
officers exclaimed: "Who couldn't have marched 
or fought with such songs! Gentlemen, if we'd 
had your songs, we'd have licked you out of 
your boots." Often in the days of minstrelsy, 
when fear, masked behind caution and di- 
plomacy, ruled the council, the minstrel's harp 
infused such courage that the assembly broke 
up in a declaration of war. 

Music is no less an agency in the battles of 
heart and soul, where "we wrestle not with 
flesh and blood, but against principalities, 
against powers, against the rulers of the dark- 
ness of this world, against spiritual wickedness 
in high places." But the note that arrests us 
must come from the life-harp. Men who run 
from duty and conviction must have more than 
eloquence of word to steady the heart or nerve 
the arm for the conflict. No clangorous appeal 
or flourish of wordy trumpets can drown the din 
which a cowardly life makes. The refrain that 
inspires us with courage comes from the life 
that stands simply, but firmly at post of duty, 
or heads a desperate charge, or leads a forlorn 
hope. It is the tonic power of the quiet, con- 
trolled man that stays us in the panics of life. 

Some one, describing the fear of the battle- 
field — the fear that led Marshal Ney, just 
before a charge, to apostrophize his trembling 



76 THE HARPS OF COD 

legs — has said: "On the physical side it checks 
the flow of saliva and brings on the peculiar 
thirst of the battlefield; it causes organic de- 
rangement, muscular relaxation. On the men- 
tal side it paralyzes the intelligence and leads to 
the blind desire for flight, the flight of panic, a 
reflex and often involuntary act." 

The description may stand for something 
that is occurring constantly in society about us. 
Nothing is more contagious than fear. A 
single man with ashen face, rushing to the rear, 
irresistibly draws some after him, and will shake 
the confidence of all about him. 

Greed is nothing so much as the fear that in 
the distribution of things we shall not get our 
share, or that some one shall secure more than 
we do. And the thought of it sets whole multi- 
tudes surging back and forth in a wild melee of 
struggle for things of little comparative worth. 
So we have panics in Wall Street, panics over 
Western mines, a panic to get in on industrials, 
or some other stock which in a small but vivid 
way types the frenzy possessing millions with 
fear — fear on one extreme of the poorhouse, on 
the other that they will lose five millions and 
have but a meager twenty millions left! It is 
all cowardly. And men grow afraid to be 
honest, lest, after all, honesty is not the suc- 
cessful policy. They mistrust the Golden Rule, 



THE MARTIAL CHORD 77 

They suspect it as a principle of modern com- 
mercialism. They are afraid to work quietly, 
surely, and faithfully, lest it mean failure. 

The growing hold of amusement upon our 
modern life is very much like a panic. The 
crowds that at risk of life and limb rush for 
seats in our street cars and boats and "Fun 
Palaces" only picture the similar, though 
larger movement of society. Multitudes are 
possessed with the frantic fear that they will 
miss something — some new pleasure, some rare 
sensation. The breeding of generations is lost, 
for they dare not be courteous, lest some one 
get ahead of them. They are afraid to en- 
cumber themselves with kindliness, respect for 
others, and the amenities which had a place 
in the slow world of yesterday. It is the fear 
of not "getting there." And so they lose the 
delights and profit of meditation and intro- 
spection, the pleasure of the fireside with its 
companionships of people in and out of books, 
and forget how to be pleasantly serious, and 
how to achieve the simple inexpensive pleasures 
thrown in everyone's way. 

It is in something of a panic too that men 
are abandoning the religious ideals and the 
standards of their fathers. Multitudes are 
pulling up the anchors that have held them, 
are leo^ng the refuges that have covered them, 



78 THE HARPS OF GOD 

and have thrown away hope and faith in a wild 
movement from all shrines and altars. 

But amid all this hurry and fear a man arises, 
calm, steady, standing like a rock in the path 
of retreat, quietly and joyously attesting in 
every deed his assurance of the unapproachable 
value of things ethical, aesthetic, and spiritual. 
His life arrests the drift. Men stop as if at a 
bugle-note, recognize it as the signal of heaven, 
and, accepting it as the call of duty, renew 
their fealty to the best things in life. 

It was a martial air with which God sur- 
charged the soul of Joshua with intrepidity — 
"Be strong and of good courage." No less does 
he sound it to-day in clarion tones from the 
heroic spirits who have battled through time 
for mighty purposes and to mighty ends. 
Luther's Battle Hymn was but the faint expres- 
sion of a valorous soul which has infused 
generations since with the over-coming Spirit. 
The trumpet-blast of defiance from the life of 
Chrysostom has martialized whole generations 
of men. 

"I will slay thee," said the emperor unto 
him. 

"Nay, thou canst not, for my life is hid with 
Christ in God." 

"I will take away thy treasures." 

"Nay, that thou canst not do, for, in the 



THE MARTIAL CHORD 79 

first place, I have none thou knowest of. My 
treasure is in heaven, and my heart is there." 

"But I will drive thee away from man, and 
thou shalt have no friend left." 

"Nay," said Chrysostom, "and that thou 
can'st not, for I have a Friend in heaven from 
whom thou can'st not separate me. I defy 
thee; there is nothing thou can'st do to hurt 
me." 

When Gordon stood upon a parapet exposed 
to the fire of the enemy, and they called him to 
come down, an English soldier said: "It's all 
right. 'E don't mind being killed." But the 
real courage of the man affects us most when 
we see floating from his tent the white flag, 
which told a whole army that its leader was at 
prayer and must not be disturbed. And this 
aligns precisely with that type of courage 
which in mid-Africa calmly faced defeat, and 
met death where a neglectful and ungrateful 
government abandoned him at his post of duty. 

Emerson's hero is the man who will "take 
both reputation and life in hand, and with per- 
fect urbanity dare the gibbet and the mob by 
the absolute truth of his speech and rectitude 
of his behavior." And such a character is 
vibrant as a fife-and-drum corps with the 
strains that stir men to heroic action. 

But most people fight all their years the 



80 THE HARPS OF GOD 

battle of which Creasy shall never hear. And 
they are the world's "Decisive Battles," though 
fought in obscurity and silence, without the 
pomp and spectacle and inspiration of war. 
Men there are who patiently accept the obli- 
gations and business of life with the handicaps 
of ill health, and a hard environment or de- 
pressing influences. No fierce charge which acts 
as a spur to lagging power; no glorious assault 
with its mad impetuosity; "having done all" 
just "to stand" at post of duty outlooking on 
dreary landscape, taking up, day after day, the 
monotonous round of the same old tasks. What 
an inspiring spectacle it was on the field of 
Murfreesboro when General Rosecrans, at the 
close of the first day's battle, disposed his com- 
mand in a new position, and, turning, said to 
the army, "Gentlemen, we conquer or die 
here." And yet multitudes have deliberately 
planted their colors by a common, homely duty 
and, all unheard by the world, have as em- 
phatically issued their challenge to encroaching 
trouble and invading trial. There is a boy who 
could charge a university and carry its courses 
by storm, who must be content to see his 
vision fade while he does battle with poverty 
at the door of the home. An artisan must he 
be all his days, but he is keeping his honor as 
purely as a Chevalier de Bayard, and the high 



THE MARTIAL CHORD 81 

quality of his valor evokes the whole chord of 
martial music. Such people have no thought 
of the inspiring influence of their faithfulness, 
and little dream that their highest contribution 
to their fellows is the note of cheerful courage. 
Kent Knowlton says of one such: 

A song welled up in the singer's heart 
Like a song in the throat of a bird, 

And loud he sang, and far it rang, 
For his heart was strangely stirred; 

And he sang for the very joy of song, 
With no thought of one who heard. 

Within the listener's wayward soul 

A heavenly patience grew, 
He fared on his way with a benison 

On the singer, who never knew 
How the careless song of an idle hour 

Had shaped a life anew. 

Goethe makes a chance strain of an Easter 
hymn defeat the purpose of a suicide, a thought 
which Chopin has wrought into one of his noc- 
turnes. We cannot do a worthy, faithful deed, 
without its being a song, though we know it 
not, to some despairing, hopeless soul. We 
cannot sing at our own work without setting 
in motion a song which will set many other 
hearts singing at theirs. If we utter one carol 
of praise, it will make itself a Hallelujah Chorus 
in other hearts. A woman who had dropped 
all her tasks in life and given herself up to 



82 THE HARPS OF GOD 

despair, one day heard a washer-woman sing- 
ing. She stopped and said: "Why, good 
woman, how is it you can sing amid this/' and 
she included the poverty and disheartening sur- 
roundings in an expressive sweep of her hand. 
And the other replied: "O, there's always such 
a good breeze in this alley." The disheartened 
one returned to her home with a song in her 
heart which broke from her lips the next day, 
and the poor despairing husband, worried by 
his business care and his wife's ill health, re- 
membered it and hummed a tune at his office. 
A teamster who was waiting for his order 
looked up in surprise, but that night as he 
drove into his own dooryard he was whistling 
softly. His little girl heard him, and when 
with unwonted joy she clasped her arms about 
his neck, she expressed the pleasure of the 
little home as she said, "O papa, I didn't know 
you could whistle so beautiful." 

We may be a Harp of God leading hu- 
manity in the New Song of the Kingdom of 
Heaven, whose blessed coming shall be with 
such harmony that "the mountains and the 
hills shall break forth into singing, and all the 
trees of the field shall clap their hands, . . . 
and the ransomed of the Lord shall return 
and come to Zion with songs and everlasting 
joy upon their heads." 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 





III 




